


Part 6: Anniversary

by mantra4ia



Series: Bucky x Reader: Words are the Best Weapons [6]
Category: Bucky Barnes - Fandom, Cacw - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, marvel 616 freeform, post Captain America Civil War - Fandom
Genre: Anniversary, Bucky Barnes's Notebooks, Drama, F/M, Fanfic, Gen, Humor, Marvel 616 (Freeform), Series, Slow Burn, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantra4ia/pseuds/mantra4ia
Summary: Archetype: Bucky x Reader, alternating POVsSnapshot: Tasked with the mission of rehabilitating Bucky Barnes, no one said it would be easy.There comes a point when every counselor, aide, case officer, and therapist questions not only their effectiveness, but their open door policy."My door is always open." How could you not realize how loaded that statement would become? Not only does it grant you access to Bucky's life, but now he can see into yours.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PreSerum_Shaunee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreSerum_Shaunee/gifts).



> Previously: Midnight  
> You made one house call. One! How did you wake up in the Avenger's safe house, in a set of Sharon Carter's clothes, alone. The only note: "Your clothes are in the dryer, your laptop is charging, and I have to postpone our next session. My apologies. Please give me a raincheck, this once. -JB"  
> Raincheck. That would be funny, you thought, if this whole situation wasn't such a precarious mess of entanglement.

**Reader's POV**

The morning after the midnight in question, you woke up alone. Bucky had left for Wakanda before dawn. He had confronted his indecision after all. You on the other hand, delirious from jet lag, stumbled home despite Sam's offer to drive you. You declined if only on principle, because you were uncomfortable with the way he observed you, as if witnessing a walk in shame.

In the week that followed, Doctor Cho made the fine motor adjustments to Bucky's new synthetic arm, a bit each day until it integrated seamlessly into the old shoulder socket, and Bucky could precisely control all it's flexibility. The next week, Bucky and the new arm were subjected to every kind of field test imaginable to assess and repair any stress fractures. Bucky also learned how to tune it in action as he went, to prolong it's integrity and function. You had not asked, but Steve kept you informed at regular intervals to make up for Bucky's absence. You also suspected it was his subtle way of thanking you, for whatever part of Bucky's progress he attributed to your help.

* * *

Across and ocean, Bucky admired the personal composure of the T'challa - Black Panther, stalwart leader of his people - though he could not express it in words. T'Challa had indeed advised on and forged a warrior's arm, and it took a kind of grace to entrust this weapon to a man he hardly knew, a man with demons, a man he had once suspected of the very terrorism now plaguing Wakanda. A threat that the king conceded he would soon need like-minded men to put down. No, like-minded was not the word, alike in soul. Men who had every reason to vengeful of their circumstance, of being victims, but refused to let it dictate further chapters in their lives. T'Challa would need Bucky, and he would need him in full spirit; in this way he hoped the new vibranium arm was a branch of trust would enliven some of confidence that had grown dark in Sargent Barnes.

* * *

**Bucky's POV / Natasha's 3rd Person POV**

The return home from Wakanda was a long one, which meant plenty of time with your own thoughts, chief among them regret; you had not quite given everything in the field tests, which may have compromised their effectiveness. Every time you approached near maximum exertion against T'challa or his myriad of obstacles, something in you hitched - not physically, but as a mental safeguard. You and Natasha were co-piloting a quinjet, quietly absconded by Fury, over the Atlantic when the amusing thought crept through a tear in the regret. _You're thinking too hard, which as a rule I don't recommend._ This must be somehow like what (Y-N) felt upon returning home from the Amendments Proposal, the literal jet lag pouring into every minutia from muscle to mind. Absently the thought of her wandered around with conscious jabs and pangs; what was most tiring, two weeks of rigorous field training or six hours of filibuster as a political ambassador? You cringed, suspecting perhaps the latter.

(Bucky's face was not as impenetrable as normal when Natasha glanced over at him. He was usually just out of reach of her discernment without putting in a bit of work, but today he was clearly happy for a specific reason. Natasha knew that reason began with a particular someone, and so she took the opportunity for some one-to-one interrogation, letting the jet fly with FRIDAY.)

“It's nice to see that your expression has more than one setting." Natasha suggested. "What were you thinking about just now Barnes?”

With a bit of self-conscience, the smile settled back into a soft, or rather safe neutrality. You trusted Natasha, in fact you had a lot in common with her, _but her ability to **read** you was still unnerving_. At that a thought popped into your head unbidden,  _write a book you would want to re- **read**. _ “Nothing specific - the state of Wakanda,"

"It's beautiful isn't it?"

You could feel an affirmative hum in your chest that would have been a low and long whistle if played out loud. "It's not quite like anything I've ever seen." Beauty didn't quite touch what to call it. The country and the people, new and modern right alongside working farmers and herders (albeit rhino), stirred a reminiscent echo of the Stark Expo. The technology, the prospective futures, propped right up against the ordinary, in a momentary effervescent peace. "I was thinking how I'm not to be a diplomat.”

“Right there with you.” Natasha said, recalling her last brush with capital hill going through the motions of being actively engaged in flight. “But some of our skills as agents align, being patient enough to know that you won't always get what you want, when you want it, but experienced enough to know that it doesn't matter so long as you prioritize key pieces of intelligence...” she trailed off.

“But I couldn't manage the civility. The politeness to people to who clearly want to be anything but polite.” You picked up in Natasha's place. “The people who want to pick fights in order to generate wars. I wouldn't handle that very diplomatically.”

That's the slip, Natasha thought. This isn't about Bucky being peaceable. He's overthinking about (Y-N) their differences, missing what they share in common. Typical.

“You give yourself too little credit Barnes. Firstly, there are records that you were rather suave in your time. Secondly, you're a riffleman. Was there nothing you learned about suppressing fights and picking battles to win a war with as few casualties as possible?”

“I wouldn't normally put any skills I learned from the Commandos into the political sphere. There's nothing civil looking through the scope of a gun”

“Accurate, but not precisely what I mean. All I'm saying Barnes is that you don't see all angles. Bruce – I know you don't know him all that well, but when someone picks a fight with him, it's not that fight he wins, it's the argument with himself about whether he'll play into it. He chooses his battles, though they are mainly with himself. That's how he remains...mostly diplomatic.” Natasha, master apothecary of truth, waited to see what effect her mixture of words would illicit. "But clearly that's not struggle you'd be familiar with, is it?" she pushed.

The topic of conversation wasn't Natasha's point. Not really. She was letting you in, the tiniest bit, connecting you and her and Bruce and (Y-N), a sense of fellowship that you felt rarely in the present day. It was welcome.

"I think I'll pick my battles." you replied, electing not to play into the question.

Natasha noted this understanding and renewed sense of confidence, so she decided it was time to take off the kid gloves. “Call (Y-N) already. You two have plenty to catch up over the last two weeks. You've missed at least 3 meetings.” She knew that Bucky has tried reaching out to (Y-N) twice in Wakanda to have a session. Both times, the connection went straight to voicemail. Nat wondered if anything out of the ordinary had occurred in their personal-professional relationship some weeks ago to form this rift – rift wasn't the right word, this awkwardness - between them, or if they were artificially creating it themselves.

You nodded to Natasha, but still felt the strange need to remove yourself from the cockpit to make the call in private. On the visual comms, you fixed an appointment with (Y-N) upon landing. She looked different, strained. You'd been wondering after the way things ended that night in the rain, by the way you'd left the following morning without disturbing her, if something shifted in the trust you shared. But knowing that in a few hours you could see her face-to-face again gave you hope.

* * *

  **Your POV**

Lateness: noted as the secondary chronic condition Bucky suffered from in your patient file. Most days, the primary symptom was ending your sessions hours behind schedule. Tonight, however, he had failed to show up at your office for his scheduled meeting at all. Until Bucky called that morning, you hadn't planned on going into the office today. You were so concerned about his uncharacteristic behavior when he didn't show up, that you spent an extra hour on a secure line calling every single Avenger (save Tony) until you were connected with director Fury, who stated that Barnes' quinjet was delayed due to course change and nothing more.

Needless to say, you were caught so unaware by Bucky knocking on your apartment doorstep at 9:00PM, that you dragged him through the doorway by the brim of his pitifully concealing hat.

“Bucky! Unlike Clint's place and Sharon's loft, this is not a safehouse. There are no protocols, it's not secure, you can't just show up here unannounced whenever you feel like it. It's dangerous [for you, moron]. Who else knows you're here?”

Bucky was a little taken aback by the abruptness of the greeting. He had missed their meeting earlier this evening when Natasha picked up a lead on Dr. Banner's location that delayed them several hours. The lead, to Natasha's disappointment, ran cold, and Bucky found himself distracted, spending the 'post-mission' mostly in silence opposite her, prepared if she wanted to talk. Though it was not unappreciated, the majority of what Natasha said to him were scathing remarks on his lateness. Brought abruptly back to the moment, Bucky had realized in his rush not to leave another conversation unfinished between the two of you, as it had been when he'd left you at midnight weeks prior, he had miscalculated - coming here had been a poor decision.

“Only Nat knows I'm here.” He was flustered, more conservatively a Steve trait than a James Barnes quality. “You're right, it's not safe. I'm sorry, I'll let -” Bucky was about to let himself out when he registered your altered appearance, stricken and sickly.

Conceding that this was going to be more than a momentary explanation, you sidestepped Barnes to close the door, and forced his retreat by reigning him toward your couch. “You may as well sit down and get comfortable Bucky. It's a long story.”

“What happened?” he inquired, with a hesitance synonymous with confusion.

You tried to ease the formality of the situation. “I'm the envious type. When I heard that you were getting a new metallic accessory, I wanted something of my own.”

"I'm serious." He glanced down at the oxygen canister, up past the valve and the tubing, and locked in on your face.

“I _have_ pneumonia, soon to be _had_. It started with a chest cold after you left, settled into bronchitis around the same time Steve came around my office to say that your new arm was fully installed. It advanced to this stage last week. I've decided I don't care for being sick, though I should apologize for not taking your calls. It's been rather odd being out of the office for an extended amount of time, not at all like the vacation I had in mind.”

“How did you get ill?” Bucky asked, suspecting that he would not like the answer, suspecting that he was the contributing factor, remembering that night in the rain, remembering all the evenings spent talking at length with little rest.

You would not give Bucky the satisfaction. “Trouble sleeping, an immune system compromised by travel, perhaps very far down the list being caught in the rain...” Bucky smirked at his own transparency. "All concepts I think you are generally unfamiliar with as a super soldier. If you ever do get sick, I'd be happy to explain it to you, but that may be the day the world ends.” He remembered rarely being ill as a child, and so conceded with a imperceptible nod that he might be out of practice.

The banter had gone a long way to thaw the initial icy greeting, as you sipped hot coffee across the living room table from Bucky. You'd offered him a cup as well, which he'd accepted only as you forcibly set it down before him, but since then he'd only eyed it speculatively. Did he take offense to the mug, designed as Steve's shield, or was it amusing? “Are you...(Bucky was about to say well, which you were obviously not)...feeling any better?”

“Considerably so, I've almost finished with my course of antibiotics.” You coughed a few moments, rattling enough to make Bucky uncomfortable. “That's how they seem to work, clearing out the rubbish,” you clarified to Bucky.

“And that?” He gestured to the canister.

“More a precaution then anything else. By default I reject bed rest and overnight hospital observation, so my physician saddled me with this. It maintains the blood O2 levels through the activities of daily living. I'm telling you it works, I can nearly take the steps two at a time,” you jested as you twisted the oxygen valve shut and took the cannula off for easier conversation. “Now that I've given you the ins and outs of my new prosthetic, why don't you show me what you are made of?”

Bucky defaulted back to hesitation, “There's hardly anything in this apartment suitable to demonstrate on” he said. As he glanced around the place, indeed, he knew it wouldn't do. The apartment, decorated in varied palettes of blue, hard wood floors, seemed very...off...to him, as if he couldn't picture (Y-N) in it naturally. The comforts seemed preserved, pristine, hardly lived in. He wanted to know more.

“Why not have some coffee?” you eyed Bucky suspiciously.

It seemed he had no choice. Bucky cautiously took the mug and laced the metal fingers through the handle, resisting the urge to steady the mug with his other hand. The prosthetic performed with precision, raising the cup as he sipped coffee and...cinnamon? That was surprising.

All the time your eyes were on him. He was performing exceptionally well right until the very end when, attempting to set the cup back on the table, the handle cracked and the cup shattered to the floor with it's steaming contents.

“Damn it, I'm so sorry.” You were already calmly making your way back from the kitchen as Bucky was picking up the shards of disaster. You joined him, kneeling on the floor, sopping and unfolding the towel as you went.

“I didn't really like that mug anyway, too on the nose, so the only real casualty was perfectly good coffee.”

“It had cinnamon in it.”

“Do I detect an objection to cinnamon?” you said as you stood up with the wet towel, spill neutralized, heading for the sink to rinse and wring.

“No, it was very good.” Bucky was treading cautiously, “I didn't picture you as someone who puts spice in their coffee.”

"I take it there's something else you're struggling to picture" (Y-N) called from the kitchen sink, the towel thoroughly twisted into submission, before setting it on the sill to dry.

Uncharted territory now. “ I just didn't imagine you in an apartment like-” Bucky's thoughts were abruptly halted by the flicking sound of a lighter flint. “Are you smoking!?”

“Cigarettes, filthy habit,” you said on your way back from the sink, two fresh cups in hand. "Would you like one?"

“Should you be smoking?” You countered her absurd question with one of your own.

“Not in the slightest, but its an annual tradition, a matter of sentiment.”

“Why?”

“Because you're right. This place, I don't quite fit neatly into it anymore. Before I became a therapist, before I was contacted by SHIELD, I was an ER resident at Calvary Hospital. It was my work, my world, where I met a self-righteous EMT named Liam. This was his place, before he enlisted.” The way you spoke told Bucky the story he had never asked for, for lack of conviction.

“I'm so sorry,” Bucky empathized.

“Whatever for?”

Puzzled, Bucky probed deeper, he knew so little about you in comparison to the stories you could tell about him if you had a mind to. So curiosity came naturally. “You said _was_ his place, I just assumed...”

“Oh, I see. You misunderstand, Liam came home, but not without his fair share of baggage. His right leg was amputated above the knee from a severe crush injury after an IED folded his vehicle with him inside it. Ironically the majority of the injury wasn't physical. He made great progress in rehabilitation; the pervasive long term injury was mental, which is harder to recover from as I'm sure you're aware.” Your tone was turning acerbic through no fault of Bucky's, but you could not bring yourself to look him full in the face. His eyes seemed stricken enough, you did not want him to read into yours too.

Bucky wanted to know more, though not at this cost. Not at your expense. But connections in his mind were forming words unchecked. “Sam tells me sometimes about the veterans he speaks with. There's anger there, and survivor's guilt, and images so vivid that they know they'll carry for most, if not all of their lives. In my time as a soldier I suppose I should be grateful that my...experiences...never afforded me the chance to feel those things.”

“Didn't they though?” You asked. Just because the memories weren't all there, it didn't mean the feelings were gone. Wasn't that the point of your whole exercise with Barnes, you thought. Couldn't he hold onto that?

"What I saw is hard to remember clearly," Bucky lied. “I didn't witness the same senseless loss of life."

“No, some would argue you saw worse. As an allied soldier you saw the concentration camps, did you not?” Silence. “The kind of savage violence when a family is ripped apart and feel they can do nothing but for one another but pray, and that's if their faith survived intact. Even in the face death, be it slow starvation or swift execution, the thought of isolation and the death of their loved ones was worse. The magnitude of witnessing that...”

"I didn't experience the same emotions.” Lies still. "The Winter Soldier was made to have that control."

 “You cannot hold such a tight reign over your feelings until the day you lose control. Even if you go through an entire life that way, and you may live an exceptionally long life, that day will come and the fallout will feel like the back hand of God.” Silence still, so you said a little more softly. “Bucky, those feelings have to be felt, even for someone like you, even the anger. The Winter Soldier remembers even the smallest details about all of your targets.”

“The people I killed.”

“And what does that tell you? You're telling me that you don't feel?”

“I wasn't made to. It's the only thing I'm grateful for. No anger, no fear...” was all Bucky could manage.

You were angry now, properly angry to the point when your stomach turned and the bile rose and you could feel a headache begin to form, but instead of exploding immediately you took a long, pensive pull on the cigarette. You were starting to feel it's effects as you muffled a cough; the shortness of breath gave you something to focus on that you could control. Shortly you said, “You're a fool, Bucky Barnes. I honestly don't know what we're doing here. If you don't allow yourself to feel and feel deeply, for whatever the reason you think that course of action might be justified, then you will _never_ take back control, because you will never form a strong enough connection in this life to surmount your last. You should go...”

Bucky could not even look you in the eye anymore, he stared down into your coffee, still steaming.

Your cigarette half way exhausted, you walked across the apartment and part way opened the door as a cue to Bucky that progress had ceased and consequently it was time for your session to be over. In last a last effort in scalding contempt you said quietly as he passed, “You can take comfort that you're not the only fool I've met.”

Bucky was ready to leave, every bit of reason told him he should, but as he got to the door and looked at (Y-N), cigarette in hand, shoulders weighted by defeat, he felt a spark of indignation. No, a spark of anger. Why should she have the final word when he had come this far, to her very door, only to be shut out? Was this what she wanted, this loss of composure, Bucky thought as he took the door right from her hand and drove it back in its frame. What was so good about feeling this? What was the point of seeing her jump in fear? He already knew the looks that people gave a monster, why did she want him to feel this way again! Anger upon anger.

Then Bucky shuddered, a whole body shudder. He had never felt more awake, and aware. The Winter Soldier was a foggy veil of enhanced senses that paled compared with this. "Oh my God."

Perhaps there was hope, you smiled, and tried to diffuse the chain reaction that you'd just set ablaze in your living room. “Hmm...I think maybe you get some of your chuckleheadedness from Steve, or he from you. I've only met the man a handful of times but he too struggles to _allow_ himself feel loss: harbinger of shame that he is not having searched for you after the tram accident, knowing all the years of suffering that followed for you. But heaven forbid he say it, because he's Captain America, and his team looks to him for leadership.”

Bucky sat down on the sofa again, flooded by thought. His new perspective of Steve coupled with growing knowledge of you only left him confused and looking for more answers. So he took out his notebook and began to scribble fervently, to ink out the thoughts. “You may be right about Steve,” Barnes said without looking up from the page, “but when you said you've known other people like me, fools, I get the feeling he's not who you meant.” At this juncture, you sat down next to Bucky on the sofa instead of across from him. “May I?” Bucky asked.

You passed him the last of the cigarette, he took a pull and instead of passing it back to you, put it out in the ashtray. You laughed at his artful deception.

“Liam was my fool. This," you gestured to the subs of ash, "was a habit he brought into our home forged in service. That, and a horrendous beard.”

“What happened?”

“When he came back from deployment and was discharged, he was one of the 'lucky' ones. His old EMT job was still waiting for him and his crew welcomed him back to the bus. Being an ambulance driver gave him purpose, There were adjustments to be made, but Liam took them well. He seemed so happy in his element again, a mile a minute. He and I left for work together one day, and near the end of my shift I called like I always did, to see how late he was running to pick me up. Liam was always late, the job of an EMT often demands it. It never bothered me, we'd even come to a code of understanding; less than 10 minutes late was a good day on the job, another 15 minutes that meant the boys had to blow off steam talking shop to avoid taking work home. Anything over 25 minutes late was a terrible 'I need a cup of coffee' day. I was at the end of shift on the way back to start a fresh batch when his guys came in off the bus, through the ER, with him on a gurney.”

Bucky's sides ached with a sharp pain, and he realized he was holding his breath. He'd stopped writing and looked at (Y-N) sitting to his left, He was beginning to remember, understand, illness more clearly. She looked ill, or at least very worn. Tattered around the edges in spirit. (Y-N) put so much of herself into helping others, he wondered how much she ever got back in return.

“I didn't know what was happening right away. I thought maybe he was caught up in an accident on-scene." Bucky was torn between wanting to look away, but not daring. "Liam was the third person to overdose that day. Antidepressants in his case. I didn't know, he never talked about it, and I didn't pry hard enough to get him to talk about it. I worked on him for thirty five minutes, because I had it set in my head that when he came to, I was going to be stronger for him, I was going to yell at him, I was going to give him a new prosthetic, he was going to get the wake-up call that he was not in this alone. He wasn't going to make these decisions on his own, it wasn't his right.” You took a breath, it ached, and so you asked for Bucky's help. With his long arms he reaching across the table, grabbed your oxygen canister, and helped to slip the tubing in place. Slowly he turned the valve until you gave him a nod and the breaths came easier. “I only lost one patient that night. On any other day, that would have been a good day. On that day, it was the last shift I ever worked as a medical doctor.”

Bucky knew then that he had to commit to the new arm he'd been given, to feel with it to the fullest. He could not afford to give anything less because he was fearful of what his emotion might cause. The backlash of withdrawing from the world made him far more volatile and dangerous to those he cared about. Slowly he extended his metal arm, and carefully so that he was supporting the weight of it, rested it on (Y-N')'s shoulder. “The back hand of God” Bucky repeated, letting it sink into him like a central truth.

“Yeah, something like that,” you gathered your thoughts. “I loved Liam. But when he died, the way he chose to die, how he must have been alone. I carry that with me, and I needed a place to put it. To allow myself to feel. So I live in this apartment to remind me he was here, and every now and then I take out one of these god-awful cigarettes; it's not sentiment, it's the anger and I let it smolder a little. The violence in which he took his life robbed him, but it also robbed me of more opportunities to love him. I might never have been able to change his choice, but if let me in, more to the point if he was honest with himself about drowning that deeply, I could have at least been with him in the. He took that chance away from me.”

Bucky was struck by a nail in every word. But he remained calm and still until (Y-N) looked at him from the hand on her shoulder, past his arm, to his eyes. He was staring at someone he could easily have met in 1940. It rattled something in him to see her as she was now, less encumbered with her own thoughts, less concerned with trying to steel them from others, not thinking too hard. “I need you to cut yourself a break Sergeant Barnes. Take liberty to own your emotions. Use them, _please_ , to finish what we started so that you can come through the other side of this in one piece...or at least as close to one piece as a super soldier with a prosthetic arm can claim.”

Bucky was about laugh, but he knew it was his turn to clear the air. “While I was away, I called. Not just the office, but your work mobile; was being sick the only reason you didn't answer?”

“No. I wanted to give you space. My house call, in some ways, crossed a line. You left before I was awake, so I didn't get the chance to discuss it with you. I am sorry about that.”

“I didn't want to wake you so soon after you'd fallen asleep.”

“I understand. But now that you know about Liam, you know my history on the wire between personal and professional. I want to help you, Bucky, not hurt your progress. I need to remain objective, though I realize in these circumstances," you gestured broadly around you at your home,  "I'm not setting the best example.” Bucky was about to protest when his grumbling stomach beat him to the punch, and it caused the serious demeanor to shatter.

“I promise I can remain objective while we work on this reprogramming sequence. If I can demonstrate that to you, can we work here a while, and maybe eat?” said Bucky. “I may be a super soldier, but I think this requires more than coffee. No lines need be crossed.”

While his promise gave you some comfort, Bucky had no idea that you were not nearly as worried about him blurring the lines as you were about yourself unconsciously drifting over them, like waves on sand. Still, in this situation, compromise and food might go further toward progress than a stick. “Say no more,” you said as you sprang from couch to kitchen. “Though we should probably stop meeting like this in the dead of night.”

“Agreed” Bucky gestured to the food flying from the refrigerator, the pan being preheated on the stove, and the cast iron skillet being warmed in the oven. “What's all this?”

“This, my ageless friend, is a new-ish concept popularized in the last thirty years or so that you've been missing. Breakfast for dinner. All the kids are doing it. And I figure that this is an easier ask than udon, ramen, or boba tea,” you said as you cracked three large eggs and a half dozen strips of bacon into the skillet. “Make yourself useful and slice this onion,” you said, and Bucky caught the hurtling projectile astutely from mid air as you began to wash and grate potatoes.

“The better question is why all this? What is the point of breakfast for dinner?”

“The point is two-fold: to catch you up on current trends, and to use up whatever I have left in my fridge since I've been too sick to go market shopping this week.”

Cooking and banter and rehearsal of sample word commands, visual cues, and emotive prompts went on like this for a half an hour, until between the two of you there was a plate on sunny side eggs, bacon, and oven crisp hash browns. Just as Bucky was about to reach for the eggs and bacon, the whole grain bread popped out of the toaster and you swatted his grasp away. “Acccchhht, one of these first.” You set before him a fruit bowl of strawberries and blueberries, and a piece of toast that he eyed suspiciously spread with mascarpone, honey, almonds, and roasted plums. He cringed “There's no cinnamon in this too, is there?”

“Shut up and try it. Fiber first, old man. Well into your 90s and you still eat like a frat boy.” Bucky shot you such a venomous look that you thought you were going to choke on your eggs. He hated so much that he was enjoying the plums on toast that he settled for refusing to say anything at all. Satisfied you popped a handful of blueberries into your mouth.

“Okay, let's review this one more time.” And you began with _longing._ "Except this time, counter me."

So Bucky recited his commands, for the first time out loud, " _bridge, **rainstorm, morning.** ”_

Your chest seemed to shrink two sizes in an instant as you began to choke. Bucky hit you a few solid times on the back before turning you around to examine your watery red face, barely containing his laughter. “You alright?”

“Peachy.” **But the line has already been crossed, Sergeant Barnes.**

**Author's Note:**

> Next: Part 7- Old Flame  
> Every therapist comes to plateaus with a client. Impasse, perhaps, is a good optimistic word for where you find yourself. But the most you clash with Bucky, the more it feels like you've reached what he would call a choke point.   
> Determined to create some breathing room, Bucky revisits a past flirtation, and you pay a visit to the rest of his team.


End file.
